Yeah they sort of just let the talent rows rot. Even if you weren’t/aren’t a meta build person some rows were just so obviously 1 choice and the other two were ridiculous “who would ever take that”. No care was put into them at all. I’m hopeful that since this is replacing borrowed power systems they’ll put more care into it than the talent rows.
I see min-maxing as one end of a continuum, the other being a player who isn’t good enough at theorycrafting to recognize it’s a thing, and given the depth of learning tools in the game (or lack thereof!), has mostly taught himself bad habits that would be difficult to unlearn in the future. And between those two end points there are players who are interested in improving themselves, but would be totally turned off by the emphasis on esports that trickles through the game.
I don’t consider myself a good player. I’m a slow learner who doesn’t belong in anybody’s raid. Yet even in leveling dungeons I see players doing things (or not!) that make me feel like a genius. Like, why isn’t that priest shielding people?
The resto druid who only ever uses regrowth and struggles all dungeon. 
Min-maxing takes the fun out of everything.
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Min-maxing is fine. What isn’t fine is when the developer leans into min-maxing by engagement of other systems.
You can never escape min-maxing in a multiplayer game. It will always exist. I distinctly remember inspecting other characters in-game during WotLK and seeing the same talent tree build for nearly every class. However, part of Blizzard’s job is circumventing that so players don’t feel like they have to do so.
Min/max has created an environment where People have no tolerance for anything but the meta.
Even in most guilds you aren’t going to be able to do group content unless your toon subscribes to the cookie cutter “best build”.
I look at the talent trees in 10.0 and think it’s really pretty pointless. There will be one best build for each class and roll that you will be forced to use.
The only place where you have the freedom to experiment or be different is with friends.
Last night in Atal’dazar, the tank trying to pull everything in the center including 4 extra sky screamers and those big mobs everybody tiptoes around. We wiped on that trash pack 3 times before my little priest dropped group. And the tank was using the fel harambe appearance which…paid carry?
Subjective 
Micromanging and turning knobs can be fun sometimes
Nah, Blizzard does that.
Removing glyphs really left the mop style talents in a bad place. They really needed to do more frequent tuning passes rather than a big blast of hotfixes every raid tier/season. There is no excuse for talents to remain dead for an entire expansion, much less multiple.
Hopefully the DF system is much more well made.
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I honestly hate it. Especially when it is basically used to give information on the best class, talents, gear, etc. It just reveals imbalance which shouldn’t ever be noted unless there’s a major power difference. Then you got people, whoever at WoWhead/Icy Veins is posting popularity of class/specs in Raids and Mythic + which gives false sense of clarity who are more valuable to have over the other. I had to really show that those things are utter crap to follow because ever since Enhancement kept getting changed and further “unpopular” I had to fight and prove that its more like players have #*&$ knowledge how to play them in their current state.
The only time I find it necessary to really do this is if you’re those try hards doing mythic first runs. Its hard enough trying to have fun by playing something you think is fun but gets dunked by the elitist who think they know better but likely never played them anyways.
It all should be about making progression, up until you hit the limitations. Like say mythic +. Gear caps out from giving you any higher level gear at 15 while Mythic raid is no different. So at that point Min Maxing makes more sense but people make horrible judgement choosing things before all of it, which ruins the experience for many others.
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No, because it forces other players to make demands on other players on how to play, and generate toxicty.
Depends on many factors, It’s hard to explain, but when you play a lot with your class, you start to change your play style (different from a guide or a pro).
I don’t really know when the community started this with min-maxing, but I guess it exists to make the content more difficult for the playerbase.
Not a competitive player, and there’s almost always a hard ceiling on the quality of rewards in the content I choose to do, so it’s not a factor in the game for me.
What other ppl do on their game and with their group should not take anything away from other groups.
The problem arises when they get mixed like our Cata heroics back in the day 
Ok so I think it depends on who the other players are in the group and the intention of the person minmaxing and the other people minmaxing / not minmaxing.
It isn’t the minmaxing itself more along the lines of is the person taking in a way that could hinder their other group member’s enjoyment OR are the other group members hindering that player’s experience cause they can’t play how they want to play?
Yes.
I see a bunch of people that embrace the min-max mentality and just burn themselves out before they get to profit from said min-maxing. I also see people absolutely convinced that say, heroic raids can’t be beaten without this one specific item and spend hundreds of hours grinding for it, when another group of casual people end up beating said heroic within that same time frame spent grinding.
Min-maxing is a trap imo, outside of the absolute world first pushers, and most people could make up for the stat difference through more skillful play.
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Frost death knights is a perfect example of this. Especially right now, the only thing holding up the spec is breath of sindragosa and I’m pretty sure most DKs would say drinking battery acid is more fun than that ability but its the best right now so they stick it out.
Why is this limited to multiplayer games… Basically everyone min-max every game they play.
Outside of the people who have no clue or it isn’t possible in a particular game.
Min maxing gives you more goals to work twords in your characters progression path. it arguably provides more time spent in game then the goal of downing a raid boss or completing a dungeon
Speaking very generically, min/maxing is a style of play. I’ve known players who min/max in every game they play and spend a lot of time on that. But it’s what they find fun.
I don’t enjoy min/maxing and struggle to do it in games where I know I should in order to feel effective.
As others have said, the real problem is when anything other than min/max doesn’t work for the game. In PvE, playing sub-optimally (for a certain opinion of optimal) should be fine. Playing with friends, should be fine.
It’s when Min/Maxers set a standard that is consider the ‘only’ thing to do that sucks the life and joy out of gaming, forcing a lack of choice on others.
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